Territory sales people traditionally use tactics such as cold calling by using an alphabetical listing of prospective clients to contact and also visiting prospective clients by planning geographic routes by zip code. Sales people are generally not business people and do not have a business mindset (i.e., good business analysis and planning skills). Oftentimes, they use high pressure sales tactics to win over clients, trying to win over anyone they can, not strategizing. This leads to disorganization and inefficiency in the sales people's territory activities and thus less sales revenue is reaped than what otherwise could be.
However, there are sales process solutions that help sales people identify the key steps, and activities within, so as to help the sales process stage progress from “Qualify Lead” to the “Closed” phase. Also, techniques have been taught to help sales people perform selling activities such as needs development, objection handling, probing, and closing, in the most effective way possible and in the most convincing manner. Sales methodologies exist to help sales people develop account-level management strategies for particularly complex sales. These sales training and sales process solutions (e.g., Miller Heiman, Sandler Sales, Dale Carnegie, Solution Selling, SPIN Selling, etc.) help sales people to maximize their effectiveness with each individual sales opportunity.
A key to sales productivity is strategy and organization, not high pressure sales tactics. There is a need to not only optimize the techniques of one sales person, but also the whole team of sales people for that company. Similarly, there is a need to maximize the effectiveness of the sales process on a holistic level to provide greater sales efficiency and productivity, focusing away from the inefficient, time consuming focus on each individual sales opportunity in connection with cold calling sales. In sum, there is a need for a structured sales planning process and for associated tools to assist sales people increase their sales efficiency and productivity.